1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improvements in sanding apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to a fixing member for fixing two sections of a base plate of a hand held sander together and a base plate incorporating such a fixing member.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, there are many types of hand held sander available for tackling different types of job. In such equipment, sandpaper, glass paper etc. is attached to a base plate and the base plate is connected either to a handle so that it can be manually driven or it can be connected to a motor.
One type of base plate for a hand held, motor driven, reciprocating sander is made up of two layers, a top rigid layer which can be fixed to the motor etc. and a bottom compressible layer which has on its lower surface a surface fastening material so that suitable sandpaper can be easily attached to it.
One particularly adaptable type of sander has a base plate with a shape similar to that of a household iron. The main part of the plate is substantially oblong and tapers to a toe at its front end. A drawback of this type of plate is that the toe of the base plate gets very hot and thus, the toe section of the base plate wears out before the rest of the plate.
Previously, in order to overcome this problem, the lower layer has been supplied in two sections, a back lower section which is substantially permanently fixed to the rest of the base plate and a lower front toe section which is replaceable.
The lower front toe section is made out of a dense foam and is attached to the base plate via a rigid fixing member. The fixing member is in the form of a diamond shaped plate and is attached to the base plate by a screw. The hook part of a hook and loop fastener is glued to the fixing member, and the lower front toe section has a complementary fastener portion on one surface for fixing it to the fixing member, and a fastener portion on the other surface for attachment of the sanding sheet.
This type of arrangement has its disadvantages. Many stages are involved in the fabrication of the fixing member, specifically, a rigid plate is molded, hook type material is cut to the required shape and then the hook type material is glued onto the rigid plate. As the fixing member is fairly small, this can be an awkward and relatively time consuming operation.
Secondly, in operation, as has been stated above, the point of the sander base plate gets very hot. This continual heat recycling of the adhesive can result in the strength of the base plate being seriously degraded and may cause the fixing member to fall apart. In addition, the dust generated during sanding can lodge in the adhesive when it softens due to the heat. Thus providing another mechanism by which the sander base plate can degrade.